Edinburgh Past And Present - The Edinburgh Website

Haunted Edinburgh 1

Edinburgh is claimed to be one of the most haunted cities in the world. There are stories associated with, not just the Old Town, but different parts of the city that have entered folklore. It is difficult to know where the reality ends and the legend begins except perhaps when dealing with hauntings that happen in the present day. Here are some of those old stories together with more up to date mysteries.

THE GHOSTLY PIPER
According to legend, many years ago some workmen discovered a tunnel while working at the castle. A piper offered to investigate and marched down the tunnel while curious locals followed the sounds down the Royal Mile. When they got to the Tron the music stopped and the piper was never seen again. The tunnel was sealed and they say that ever since, when it is quiet, you can still hear the faint sounds of the piper.

JAMAICA STREET
In the late 18th/early 19th century a man in a big red hat with a pale complexion was seen. A James Campbell was taken to court by the landlord of several properties in the street accused of spreading ghost stories to get the rent reduced. Campbell was fined £5 and told not to mention the ghost but on his way out he asked the court if he could still talk to the ghost as he had done on many occasions.

HAUNTED UNDERGROUND CITY
Underneath South Bridge are many vaults and passageways. The bridge was built over Niddry Wynd and its cobbled street still lies under the bridge. In the past people lived in the vaults and there were even shops underground. You can visit the vaults on a tour and over the years many ghost stories have surfaced. Some scientific research has been conducted here but no hard evidence of the afterlife has been obtained. One of the most interesting stories happened early in 2003 when a radio producer was interviewing former rugby star, Norrie Rowan who owns part of the underground city. On playing the interview back there was a ghostly voice shouting Go Away in Gaelic but no one else had been there at the time.
I have been down there on 3 occasions and on my last visit in 2010 the group had just entered a vault when I felt the man beside me was standing just a bit too close. I could feel him breathing on me. I turned to discover there was no one beside me and at that moment the guide said that if anyone felt breathing on their neck they should stand beside her. I moved!
I used to live at the top of the building that you enter the vaults from but nothing much happened there. However I had a private attic in which many things I'd stored over the years went missing and I never understood where they'd gone.

JOHNNY ONE ARM
In 1688 John Chiesly, a wealthy man who owned land in Dalry, sought divorce from his wife. When the barrister, Sir George Lockhart, pronounced that £93 per year should be granted to Mrs Chiesly and the children, Mr Chiesly swore revenge on Sir George. He had wanted to give them nothing.
On Easter Sunday 1689, John Chiesley followed Sir George from an Easter service at St Giles and shot him dead as he was about to enter Old Bank Close. Chiesley did not flee and boasted to the assembled crowd that he had taught Sir George how to do justice. After arrest, he was tortured at the Mercat Cross to see if he had any accomplices then was eventually sentenced to be hung at the Gallow Lee. The hand he used to fire the pistol - his right - was cut off while he was still alive and put on a spike at the West Port. The pistol was hung around his neck and he was left to rot. The body disappeared.
It was said that a ghost haunted Dalry with one arm, laughing and screaming and was seen in the area for almost 300 years until 1965. That year, workmen were removing the hearthstone of a cottage in Dalry Park when they found a skeleton of a man with broken bones. He had no right hand and there was a pistol around his neck. John Chiesley's body was found after nearly 300 years. He was buried and the ghost of Johnny one arm was never seen again.

5 ROTHESAY PLACE
In the 1950's the owners bought some second hand furniture from a recently deceased sailor. They were then haunted by a foot high figure called gnomey.

BELL'S WYND
The ghost of a Mrs Guthrie is said to haunt this close off the High Street wearing her night dress. In the 18th century she was killed by her husband after he discovered she was having an affair and it is said he kept her body in a sealed room for over 20 years.

15 LEARMONTH GARDENS
In the 1930s the owners took a bone from an Egyptian mummy's tomb. The house thereafter was plagued by noise, flying objects and the spectre of an Egyptian Priest. When the bone was burned, the haunting stopped.

NAPOLEONIC GHOSTS
An article in the Scotsman from February 2003 relates a more modern ghost story. In late 2002 some workmen were carrying out renovation work at the Queen Anne building in the Castle. Some of them began to feel a presence and felt that someone was looking down on them. When photos were developed showing mysterious blue orbs around the builders heads they all refused to work alone so the foreman called in a medium. She spent the night there and reported that she felt the presence of two women and a man. Beneath the room is a vault where many prisoners of the Napoleonic wars died horrible deaths.

PLAYHOUSE
Haunted by a ghost called Albert who wears a grey coat and creates cold spots. He is rumoured to be a stagehand who had an accident or a night watchman who killed himself.

ST MARY'S STREET
In 1916 a young woman was brutally murdered in a random attack after someone jumped out a doorway at her. The woman is still seen at times standing in St Mary's street with blood splattered clothes, looking totally bewildered.

WHITE HART INN
This ancient Grassmarket Inn is reputed to be the most haunted pub not just in Edinburgh but in the whole of Scotland. Public executions used to take place nearby. Sightings of a shadow going to the cellar have been witnessed and a door down there has been seen to slam shut on occasions. Barrels have been moved and beer taps closed off and when the staff open them and go to pour a pint they find they are switched off again. These incidents and many more have been reported by staff and owners over many many years.

QUEENSBERRY HOUSE
One night in 1707 the Queenberry family left a kitchen boy alone in the house tending to a roast in the kitchen. The insane Earl of Drumlanrig was also in the house but was locked away in his room out of sight. Unfortunately he managed to get out and made his way to the kitchen where he killed the boy and roasted him alive on the spit. His ghost is said to haunt the house, now part of the Scottish Parliament.

There is a small area at the far corner of the churchyard in which many covenanters were held for days at a time, outdoors in terrible conditions. This area is now known as the Covenanters Prison. But all was quiet in that part of the graveyard until 1999!
In December 1998 on a dark rainy night, a homeless man decided he would get shelter by breaking into a mausoleum. He chose George Mackenzie's. For reasons only known to himself, the man opened the coffin and fell down dragging the coffin with him, ending up with George's skeleton lying beside him. He fled.
In early 1999 reports were coming in of strange things happening, not by Mackenzie's tomb, but around the corner in the Covenanter's Prison. The city council took the decision to close off that part of the graveyard and today you can only look through the railings.
Tours soon began to the Prison area when one company was given access and to date there have been many stories of strange phenomena including people being scratched, attacked, feeling sick and discovering marks on their bodies next day. A surprising number of people have also been knocked unconscious. The mausoleum that is visited is known as the black mausoleum but the person buried there is not famous for anything which just adds to the mystery. It is possible to see orbs (small round lights) dancing around the gravestones at night (I have seen this). A very fascinating place and one that is never out of the headlines for long. In 2004 two teenage boys were charged with breaking into Mackenzie's tomb, ripping his head off and using it as a glove puppet. Perhaps the covenanters are gaining revenge some 350 years later!

GREYFRIARS CHURCHYARD - THE MACKENZIE POLTERGEIST
Probably the most famous of modern hauntings and also one of the strangest. Even doubters of the supernatural can't deny that SOMETHING is happening here. Greyfriars is very old. Plague victims from the middle ages lie underneath the graves from later centuries but our story begins in the 1600s when an advocate called George Mackenzie, while working for King Charles II, persecuted Scots Presbetarians known as Covenanters. He was nicknamed Bloody Mackenzie from his apparent joy at seeing Covenanters hanging on the gallows.When he died in 1691, he was buried in Greyfriars near to where he had condemned many covenanters to death.

LEITH CORN EXCHANGE
This story appeared a few years ago on US television. The pub is haunted by the ghost of a 19th century publican who hanged himself there after being accused of torturing children. Staff have heard a crying child and experienced cold spots and flickering lights. The television cameras apparently caught his ghost on camera.

BALCARRES STREET
In the early 1700s a house was haunted by the green lady, reputedly Elizabeth Pittendale She was caught kissing her step son by her husband who then stabbed her to death.